Two Truths and a Lie
by Warrior of Ice
Summary: Crystal Tokyo can't come soon enough for the inhabitants of the Crystal Palace. Awakened before the rest of the world, the Shitennou and the senshi must learn to live with one other within the confines of the Crystal Palace. Series of shorts.
1. Two Truths and a Lie

_Two Truths and a Lie_

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><p>"Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?"<p>

- _The Judges: A Novel, _Elie Wiesel

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><p>At exactly fourteen and a half minutes to nine, her alarm went off. Ami frowned as she saved and logged her work, then shut down her computer for the day. This particular alarm and the event it was reminding her of gave her about as much pleasure as the unchanging, dreary view from her window – that is to say, none. This high up in the Crystal Palace, she had a perfect view of the lifeless, darkened city below her. It was one panoramic view she would never appreciate.<p>

She sighed, diagnosing half of her malaise as cabin fever. Like the rest of the world outside the walls of the Crystal Palace, its ten inhabitants had slept for several centuries. But shortly before the dawn of the thirtieth century, they and they alone had awakened, presumably to prepare for life after the freeze. Usagi was right: without regular interactions with each other, they were doomed. It wasn't Usagi's establishment of game night that had her lips pursed in distaste, it was who else was included.

The four men who had appeared so suddenly on the eve of destruction were an ever-growing thorn in the senshi's sides. It took great restraint, but Ami refrained from telling Usagi that game night was neither relaxing nor fun, that it was far more likely to drive her insane than to preserve her sanity, and that she did not _want_ to know the Shitennou better. Well, to be perfectly honest, it was less restraint and more that all four of the senshi had expressed some form of these sentiments to Usagi on multiple occasions, and the future queen had finally put her foot down and said she wasn't deaf, thank you very much, and that she wasn't changing her mind, either.

Once, Ami had excused herself from the festivities with a headache. She had been forced to encounter them anyway, since Rei set the carpet on fire that night and she had had to come and put it out. Afterwards, as if he knew she hadn't had a headache (at the beginning of the night, anyway), Zoisite had given her that infuriating smirk of his in the halls every time they met. Which was surprisingly often in a palace this size. So she had no choice but to show up, every single week.

At least she had things timed to perfection now, so she arrived exactly at nine and not a millisecond earlier. The sound of bickering voices carrying into the hallway gave her pause. She only heard female voices, which was both favorable and unfavorable: favorable, since the senshi's fights among themselves tended to be shorter and less acrimonious. Unfavorable because if, as seemed inevitable among this group of people who were accustomed to using rather violent means to resolve their conflicts, someone eventually set out to maim or kill their opponent, she preferred the victim be one of the Shitennou rather than one of her sister senshi.

Of course, Setsuna might step in before such a possibility was realized, but then again, look at all the other things the senshi of Time had failed to prevent. The list was endless: starting with the defection of Shitennou in the Silver Millennium, all the subsequent enemies they had fought, and, most recently, being late with her latest supply run, which meant they were nearly out of coffee and constantly at each other's throats. Not to mention Chibi-Usa's Electra complex.

Ami entered the game room, feeling herself step back in time. This was the only room in the palace in which wood, not crystal, was dominant. The oak paneling of the walls and the mahogany of the bookcases preened in the warm golden lamplight, and the dark walnut planks were cushioned with thick maroon rugs. Just about every game produced in the latter half of the twentieth century was in this room, as well as a bar stocked with what she thought of as criminally expensive liquor and whose contents they were going through a bit too rapidly.

Usagi, who was already in her pink bunny pajamas, perched on an armchair with a bowl of ice cream while Minako and Makoto debated in front of the storage cabinet.

"This is pointless. We're never going to come up with something!"

"How about Candyland? We haven't played that in awhile."

"No, it's too childish. What about Jenga?"

"No one will get more than one turn before the tower falls down."

It was the perpetual dilemma – what game was both acceptable to all parties and allowed for ten players? By mutual agreement, they stayed away from any games that allowed for five teams of two. Inevitably, Usagi would suggest pairing the senshi and Shitennou together, and the Crystal Palace had already undergone an appalling amount of game night-induced maintenance given how new it was.

After greeting Usagi, Ami walked over to join Minako and Makoto as the blonde's fingers passed over Trouble and Sorry! as if the boxes weren't there.

"How about Scrabble? Never mind," Ami said quickly. They had been playing Scrabble when Jadeite spelled out the word that led to Rei setting the carpet on fire. The tiles had been charred black by the time Ami arrived, but she guessed that it had either been extremely derogatory or highly amorous in nature.

"LIFE?" Makoto suggested.

"Too depressing." None of them were likely to go through a normal transition to adulthood anytime soon, or ever.

"Clue?" Minako was rapidly getting frustrated.

Rei, who had just glided into the room, said, "Trying to figure out who killed whom where and with what is a little too reminiscent of my nightmares, thanks all the same."

Usagi's spoon clinked loudly in her bowl. "Rei!"

"What? None of them are here yet. I can say what I want."

Usagi frowned as she ate another bite, but she didn't say anything else. On the other side of the room, Minako, Makoto, and Ami moved on in silent agreement.

"Charades?"

"I think the probability of needing another rug replacement is a little too high with that one," Ami sighed.

It was a shame they couldn't play Trivial Pursuit, which actually brought back enjoyable memories for them. In fact, the game wasn't even in the room – Mamoru was using it to teach the Shitennou about what aspects of the twentieth century he might not think to tell them about. They were still trying to figure out what had happened to the Shitennou, but they had established that the men's current reincarnations had appeared in the present time with no memories beyond those of the Silver Millennium.

Just as the five men walked into the room together, Minako remembered an old game they used to play at school as an icebreaker and at slumber parties to make each other blush. "I've got it! Let's play 'Two Truths and a Lie.' We haven't played that one before."

As he seated himself in Usagi's armchair, Mamoru said warily, "I don't know if that's a good idea, Minako."

"It's fine with me," Jadeite interjected. He was tired of all the tiptoeing around and of Mamoru trying to protect – well, he wasn't sure who he was trying to protect half the time.

Kunzite nodded in agreement. Zoisite sat down and crossed his arms, knowing his opinion wouldn't be taken into account anyway. Nephrite made a beeline for the bar.

Minako ignored them, somehow managing to ignore Kunzite even more than the rest of them. She raised her eyebrows challengingly at Mamoru. He glanced up at Usagi, who shrugged and nodded. The others were just relieved that something had finally been decided on. The sooner they started, the sooner they would finish, and that meant Usagi and Mamoru would be satisfied that they had all played nice together and allow them to go their separate ways for the week.

The ten of them formed a rough circle, with Mamoru sitting in the armchair with Usagi, Rei and Minako sharing a couch, Nephrite leaning against the bar, Kunzite stiff as a poker on the opposite couch beside Zoisite, and Jadeite, Makoto, and Ami on the floor.

"I'm afraid we aren't familiar with this game," Zoisite said, more out of politeness than interest.

"It's exactly what it sounds like." Two pairs of blue eyes issued admonishing glares, and Minako sighed. It was like being in kindergarten all over again. "The person whose turn it is says three things about themselves, and two must be true and one must be a lie. The rest of us have to guess which is the lie."

He nodded. "Straightforward, if rather facile."

"Only to the unimaginative," Ami replied.

"Or if you use the stars to cheat," Makoto added pointedly.

All eyes turned to Nephrite, who sneered down at her. "For a paltry game like this?"

"You do cheat at cards," Jadeite said, before he remembered whose side he was supposed to be on. From the look in his friend's eyes, Nephrite would be making sure he remembered it during their practice session tomorrow.

"Very well, I promise I won't call upon the stars. With only three options, the process of elimination should make this game end soon enough." It was clear that he was most looking forward to that part of the night. This time he was the one on the receiving end of Usagi and Mamoru's looks.

In an effort to cut off the not-so-friendly banter, Mamoru volunteered, "I'll go first. Now, the rule we'll use tonight is that if the first guess is wrong, the speaker will choose who goes next. If the first guess is right, the guesser gets to choose who goes next. Is that clear?"

They nodded or murmured their assent.

"Good. Here are my three: I love eggplant, my medical school advisor told me to go in for gynecology, and I still have my favorite piece of clothing from high school."

"What's–"

Zoisite leaned down to mutter an explanation to a perplexed Jadeite, who was having the most difficulty picking up new terminology that hadn't existed in the Silver Millennium. The latter let out a crack of laugher. "You mean that's a full-time occupation now?"

Mamoru , who resembled a ripe tomato, was regretting this game more by the minute.

Meanwhile, Minako was staring at Usagi. "I thought you got rid of that hideous green blazer!"

She replied, "I did!" and turned back to Mamoru with a confused look. "You like eggplant? But the one time I made eggplant lasagna and you didn't finish your plate, you said it was because you didn't like eggplant."

Hastily, Mamoru kissed her cheek and said, "I, uh, developed a more sophisticated palate over time. Tastes change, you know."

He searched the room for a safe prospect. Just when he found one, she got to her feet. "Excuse me," she said.

"But Ami–"

She stated calmly, "I have to use the restroom, Mamoru."

He muttered an apology. He couldn't believe it was only 9:08 and already the night was going to hell in a handbasket. "Nephrite?"

His quarry thought for a few moments, aided by several meditative sips of whisky. "I was born in what is now Austin, Texas. I used to raise hounds in the royal kennels. I once let Endymion piss in the Lake of Mirrors in Elysion."

Makoto frowned and asked, "Weren't you born in Phoenix?"

He smiled. "So you _were_ listening."

She glanced away. "Only because you wouldn't stop talking."

This exchange was of little importance to the other Shitennou. Ami returned just in time to hear Jadeite burst out, "Damn it, Endy, we _drank_ from that lake! Every single month!"

"You swore to me it wasn't you." Kunzite was giving Endymion his hardest stare, the one that reminded him of a cobra about to strike.

Minako leaned over and asked Usagi, who had spent the most time in Elysion, "Is that the lake that was so sacred even animals didn't live in or drink from it?"

"You_ knew_ about it? Why didn't you warn the rest of us?" Zoisite demanded.

Kunzite shrugged. "There was nothing to be done. Drinking from the Lake of Mirrors was an essential and unavoidable part of a centuries-old ritual, the very foundation that the Golden Kingdom rested on. I thought it was better if you didn't know."

Faced with the angry glares of his Shitennou, Mamoru said quickly, "By 'let,' Nephrite means he also pissed in the lake."

Nephrite now had two people to pound into the practice courts tomorrow, but only if the other four men didn't team up on him, which now seemed likely. "Give me a break. We were drunk. It was only the one time!"

"Perhaps you can discuss this another time, amongst yourselves. Kunzite, why don't you go next?" Usagi suggested. She was the only one who cared whether the Shitennou beat each other to a pulp, which seemed imminent, and possibly only because Mamoru was also in the line of fire. The other women looked like they were looking forward to seeing it happen.

The leader of the Shitennou nodded gravely. "As you wish. I am the Heavenly King of the North, I am the tallest person in this room, and I have never been married."

Usagi's spoon somersaulted through the air, painting drizzles of vanilla onto the rug. Everyone but Zoisite looked stunned.

"Go stand next to Nephrite," Rei ordered, but her eyes were on Minako.

Kunzite rose, his expression blank, and did so. He was taller.

"You were married?" Minako whispered.

He nodded.

"To who?"

"To you."

She turned white. Whereas the Shitennou's memories of the Silver Millennium were perfect, the others had recovered only some of their memories of their past lives. Apparently the gaps were larger than they thought.

"Kunzite, it's your turn to choose who goes next," Mamoru said, now just hoping for a quick end to his misery.

Kunzite appropriated Nephrite's glass, downed its contents, and picked at random. "Rei."

She tossed her head so that her hair fanned out in a glossy cascade. "When I was younger, I used to want to be a singer. My favorite flowers are roses. I slept with Kaidou."

Makoto's mouth fell open as she tried to figure out when this had happened. Ami decided that now was not the time to mention that objectively, Kaidou had borne a nontrivial resemblance to Jadeite.

Jadeite was looking from Mamoru to the girls, seeking additional confirmation even though he knew which was the lie. The future king buried his face in his hands and murmured, "That's a little too much information, Rei."

"I guess you can choose who goes next then," she said, unperturbed. She had achieved her goal, which had nothing at all to do with winning the game and everything to do with the look on Jadeite's face.

Usagi spoke up gently. "Jadeite–"

He looked directly at Rei, and she met his angry gaze without flinching.

"I love you, I love you, I love you." Jadeite got up and left the room.

_Fin_


	2. Sugar and Spice

**Title**: Sugar and Spice  
><strong>Description<strong>: Makoto finds a late-night intruder in her kitchen.  
><strong>AN**: Day 4 of Advent Drabblender 2011. Occurs after the events of _Two Truths and a Lie_.  
><strong>Prompt<strong>: Christmas cookies

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><p>Someone was in her kitchen. More precisely, someone was <em>burning<em> something in her kitchen. Makoto stumbled out of bed and down the ice-cold hallway, wondering if she should wake Rei and quickly deciding against it. To say that Rei hadn't been sleeping well lately was an understatement. So she would see whether she and her trusty fire extinguisher were up to the task first.

When she peered blearily into the state-of-the-art kitchen, Makoto saw that nothing was on fire, but it looked like the baking and dairy aisles of a grocery store had exploded over the countertops. In the middle of the island, trying to poke what appeared to be an impressively stubborn, already saturated-with-sugar-sprinkles cookie out of its cutter, was Minako.

"Minako? What are you doing?"

The blonde looked up, pushing her bangs out of her eyes and getting a sizeable clump of the very sticky dough in her hair in the process. "Making Christmas cookies. What does it look like?"

Making a mess, Makoto thought, but managed to bite her tongue as she eyed the ragged rows of misshapen cookies waiting to be slid into the ovens. This set over here was probably meant to be reindeer but looked more like the youma rejects of the Negaverse, and she thought the neighboring batch was supposed to be candy canes but the crooks had puffed up so much in the oven that they could be mistaken for golf clubs. The Christmas tree stems had all gotten caught in the cookie cutters, and what was left of the top halves bore an unfortunate resemblance to beehives or, well, the stylized anime version of poop. The tray closest to Minako looked like one of Ami's biology experiments from when she had been doing an independent study on amoeba. Makoto could only identify what they had been intended to be since Minako had the snowflake cookie cutter in her hand and was brandishing it in a rather threatening fashion.

"It looks like you used flour for hairspray," Makoto said matter-of-factly. She tried not to think about how long cleaning up the kitchen would take. "Is something burning?"

"Nope, I just forgot to set the timer for the last batch," Minako said airily, waving her hand in the general direction of the stove. "But the ones in the ovens are doing fine."

Makoto's eyebrows rose as she examined the cookies, which were clearly identifiable as snowmen and which appeared to be burned permanently onto the tray. She decided to take a look at the contents of the ovens herself and, after a quick peep, thought it was best not to remind Minako that frosting was meant to be applied after the cookies had cooled down and not before the baking process itself. The red and green were melting into a wonderful swirly mixture that might not have looked out of place in a peppermint shake but certainly did nothing to improve the appearance of the cookies.

"Minako, why are you making Christmas cookies in July?"

"It's not like it even matters what month it is." The bitter edge to her voice was sharper than the scent of burned vanilla extract. Outside the darkened windows, the residents of Tokyo slept on day after day, and the changing of the seasons had lost their meaning.

Minako shook the container vigorously over the tray, and a cascade of blue sprinkles rained down onto the dough. A bit too brightly, she went on, "Besides, sugar makes everything better, don't you think? These are for Ami."

Considering that these were the snowflake-amoeba cookies, Makoto thought it was quite fitting.

The oven timer went off, and Minako turned to take the cookies out. For a minute, she stared at the sheets in silence, and Makoto feared that she was about to burst into tears.

Instead, her expression remained curiously fixed. Just as Makoto was about to say something, anything, Minako picked up the trays and scraped the cookies into the trashcan with movements whose grace was paralleled only by the anger they radiated.

"Makoto, why can't I ever make anything right?" she asked softly, leaning her golden head on her friend's shoulder.

Makoto rubbed her back with her free hand, ignoring the butter and sprinkles now adorning her pajamas. "What do you want to make right?"

"Too many things," she sighed, thinking of the pain and confusion and _affection _in a certain pair of dark gray eyes.

"Minako?"

"Yes?"

"I really like having Christmas in July."

"Really?"

"Really. Let's make another batch of these…stocking cookies."

"Those were angels, Mako-chan. Angels!"


	3. Communication I: Talking

**Title**: Communication I: Talking  
><strong>Description<strong>: Finding the right words is never easy. Sometimes, it's downright impossible.  
><strong>AN**: Part of what I hope will be a four-piece set. The second part takes place directly after the events of Two Truths and a Lie, and the first part probably some time before.

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><p><em>Communication<em>

_I. Talking_

"Who's there?"

Ami's clear tones were swallowed up by the shadowy recesses of the library, the crystalline quality of her voice shattered into a dozen timorous echoes.

As he stepped slowly from the shadows, he wished he could give any other name but this one. "Zoisite."

The tension stark in her drawn face did not lessen, only shifted as it might in a man who, expecting to face a lion, now found himself facing a tiger. "Good…afternoon."

The hesitation was slight, and perfectly understandable. The light that filtered through the thick crystal walls was often capricious and nebulous, making it difficult to discern the time of day.

"Good afternoon." The unfamiliar greeting still tasted strange in his mouth, and he tried to get the words out as quickly as possible. He nodded towards the stack of books cradled in her arms. "Are those for work or pleasure?"

She looked down, as if she had momentarily forgotten their weight. "For comfort, I think." She paused, then continued, "My mother and I used to read these books together. You wouldn't have guessed it from looking at her, but she could do voices wonderfully. Perhaps it was because, through her job, she met people from many different walks of life."

"What did your mother do?" he asked, half-starved for glimpses of her life, half-reluctant to accept that there were great swathes of her life that he knew nothing about. He knew that for one who craved acceptance from others, he had surprisingly little experience in giving it.

"She was a physician – a healer," Ami answered readily.

"Like Mamoru."

She smiled briefly, and it was as if a match had been touched to a candlewick. "Yes, like Mamoru."

"And your father?"

"He was an artist."

Zoisite paused, trying to gather the unruly and fragile threads of the conversation, trying to bypass the snarls that he didn't know were there until his fingers were caught in them. "How did they react to finding out their daughter was a senshi?"

"They didn't. Find out, I mean." She smiled serenely at his shocked expression. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"Yes." He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, shifting his gaze to the darkened skylight. "In the – in the past, the senshi were immediately recognizable on the Moon and on their home planets. They were known to the farthest reaches of the universe. It wasn't always the case, but for your generation, it would have been difficult to explain the simultaneous disappearance of five royal princesses."

"I see."

He took a deep breath, then added, "Many believed this made it more difficult to safeguard the Princess Serenity. You thought it was a dreadful intrusion on her privacy, and yours."

"Fascinating."

The candle guttered out, and the shadows crept back from the corners.

"And was the situation similar for the Shitennou?"

"No."

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><p>Mamoru found Jadeite in the highest spire of the Crystal Palace, looking down at the desolate city. He knew it was useless to ask about the present. As usual, he found himself pinning his hopes on the future. "Will you be all right?"<p>

Jadeite did not respond, but perhaps it was for the best. In the heavy silence, the futility of his question, the helplessness that dogged his hours, both sleeping and waking, brooded.

Finally, Jadeite slumped against the ledge and jerked his head slightly towards the empty space beside him. "I know it is foolish to think that she belongs to me. Even in the Silver Millennium, we belonged to too many other things to belong only to each other, and we fought over it bitterly."

Mamoru looked down at his fingers, at the one fading scar he had gotten from the car crash that had killed his parents. "At the time, she didn't remember anything about you."

Jadeite laughed bitterly. "Is that meant to be comforting, Mamoru?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "The worst part of it is, I don't even know who Kaidou is."

He tilted his head, as if trying to catch a glimpse of Nephrite's beloved stars. "Did she care deeply for him?"

Mamoru sighed. "He meant a great deal to her father. At one time, he meant a great deal to her. I'm not sure what she felt when it happened."

"Is this Serenity's revenge, her punishment for our invasion of her kingdom? Because if it is, she couldn't have planned it any better than this."

Mamoru knew he spoke not of Usagi, but of her mother, and he had no answers for him.

They were silent again, and the other man traced his fingers over the crystal with the absorption a child had for a window thick with condensation on an endless car journey. His fingers moved with a mesmerizing grace that belied the tension in his shoulders. It took Mamoru some time to realize that Jadeite was writing Ancient Terran runes on the surface, the same sequence of three, over and over again.

"What do they stand for?"

"You don't want to know," he said matter-of-factly.

"I do."

Jadeite shrugged. "This one is for mourning. The next for pain."

"And the last?"

Jadeite's smile was morbidly grim. "Don't you remember? I taught you it myself. It is the inversion of the rune for memory."

"Oblivion."


	4. Communication II: Listening

**Title**: Communication II: Listening  
><strong>Description<strong>: Being willing to listen means being willing to hear something you don't want to hear.  
><strong>AN**: The first part takes place before the events of Two Truths and a Lie, and I'm not entirely sure about the second part...except that it's all angsty. Fairly swamped until mid-May but the muse calls!

* * *

><p><em>Communication<em>

_II. Listening_

Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond.

_-A Knight of Doleful Countenance_, W.H. Auden

In the Silver Millennium, Nephrite had been a lucky man. He had the ear of the prince and the favor of the stars, and he was well-liked by his comrades-in-arms and even better liked by the women. Now, the others still thought he was the most fortunate of them all, but for somewhat different reasons.

Because of the duties she had chosen, Makoto was easy to find. In between training sessions, planning sessions, and the hours when everyone tried to sleep and did so with varying levels of success, she was either in the kitchens or the greenhouse and too stubborn to be rousted from them by a mere former Heavenly King. What the other Shitennou failed to consider was that she always had some piece of equipment with sharp edges in easy reach.

Today, her arm moved with dizzying speed as she whisked egg whites and sugar in a copper bowl, but she seemed willing to let him blather on, if not to listen.

"I was born in a very hot, very arid region of the Golden Kingdom. Mamoru says that a city called Phoenix stands there now. Not many people lived there, back then. I would have been the last Shitennou to be called if the stars hadn't told me to get myself to the palace. Even then, without their urging, I would probably have been lost forever in the streets of Elysion."

"Was it that dangerous?" Makoto asked, interested despite herself. Quickly, she turned her attention back to the bowl, and Nephrite didn't manage to entirely hide his triumphant grin.

"No, it wasn't dangerous at all, but it was filled with all sorts of sights and sounds that were beyond the imaginings of a desert boy like me. It was lucky I had empty pockets and the stars directing me, otherwise I would have happily spent weeks touring the Market Square alone."

He paused, savoring the memory of his younger self as well as the delectable smells wafting from the oven, then continued, "Of course, the others made fun of me for being a big desert barbarian who couldn't seem to drill any proper court manners into his thick skull. But I got my revenge on them."

She wanted to know what he was done – that much was clear, but it was equally obvious that she wasn't about to ask a second question.

Nephrite took his time looking over the pieces of the model airplane Mamoru had persuaded Setsuna to bring after he had revealed his interest in aerodynamics. Finally, he continued, "I took them for a two week trek in my homelands, starting out at the farthest point from the oasis."

He chuckled. "I've never seen anyone who burned as fast or as red as Zoisite did."

She smiled, but her concentration appeared to be entirely absorbed by the slow-forming peaks, and she said nothing more.

"I can't tell you how much I admire your cooking skills," he said, switching smoothly from past reminiscence. "You're making… a roux?"

"A meringue," she corrected.

He fiddled idly with the pen someone had left on the table, wishing it were a pencil. Those were one of his favorite inventions – much less messy than chalk and easy to erase one's errors.

He talked for awhile, dredging up the most amusing, most harmless anecdotes he could think of. But he didn't get so much as another look from her, and when she leaned over to study a recipe intently at the climax of a story, he realized that he didn't know when he had lost her attention, but he was desperate to get it back. Yet he had no true claim to her attention, unlike the other belongings he had lost, and if he did manage to recover it, he had even less chance of keeping it than the most careless child did his toys.

Finally, he said, "Mamoru tells me you have done a lot of fighting since your…first rebirth."

Both the senshi and the Shitennou trained regularly, but never together. Usagi and Mamoru had forbidden them to challenge each other, like feuding children sent to opposite corners. He had to admit it was probably for the best.

"That's right."

Once upon a time, he used to tell her the green of her eyes was the vibrant green of new leaves, the brilliant green of emeralds, the velvety green of moss. Moss could be resilient, emeralds hard, and new leaves tender, but none of them were wary. Her eyes were wary now, warier than the first time the princess of a planet eleven times the size of Earth met one of Terra's Four Heavenly Kings in a hostile land.

"I can tell you're in excellent shape," he told her, "without ever seeing you train, and even if I hadn't seen you kneading bread dough."

"How?"

Nephrite smiled humorlessly. "Because whenever I enter your territory, you brace yourself for battle."

To his surprise, her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and he floundered, much as he had done when Jadeite had pushed him into the lake, the first time Nephrite had ever encountered a body of water larger than a puddle. He added desperately, "It does wonders for your figure."

Scorn and anger were better than hurt and indifference. Weren't they?

Her movements resonated with finality as she dried her fingers on the dish towel, untied her apron, and walked out of the kitchen.

* * *

><p>I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.<p>

-_The Bell Jar_, Sylvia Plath

"Don't talk," she ordered. "You're supposed to be concentrating so you can get a better look at this purported gate of yours."

"I _am_ concentrating," he said through gritted teeth. Beads of sweat rolled down his jaw, and his hair had been shaded from its usual sunny blond to dark blond by shadows and moisture.

Rei eyed him with grim disfavor. She still wasn't entirely convinced that this wasn't a clever ploy of his to force them to spend time together. But Mamoru had agreed that from what he could remember, the Shitennou did not access Elysion the way he did, using the Golden Crystal. They walked other paths, and each was different.

The Shitennou's present inability to access their portals was worrisome, and Rei had agreed to do a fire reading while Jadeite attempted to call up his path to the gates to see if any evil presence was keeping the gates closed to them. It had taken much of her self-restraint not to question whether the Shitennou _were_ the evil presence.

"I thought you were supposed to be the disciplined one."

"Always putting such faith in the power of control. I see at least some things haven't changed since the Silver Millennium."

She stiffened, and was annoyed at herself. As often as those words had been thrown around in the past few weeks, she should be used to it.

He smiled mockingly. "I'm sorry, did I say the bad word? Is _Silver Millennium_ the bogeyman in this day and age?"

Rei ignored him, resettling herself on the hard straw mat before the fire. The habitual position made her melancholy for the loss of the Sacred Fire, the temple, and her grandfather. She felt far from herself in this place, with this man who should never have returned to torment her.

"You can't run away from your memories forever."

She opened her eyes again. "Maybe not, but that time has passed. You Shitennou are forever digging in the ruins of a labyrinth that was collapsed to defeat a monster, not realizing that no treasures are to be found there, only the echoes of blood and pain and a tomb to fallen warriors."

"It was _our_ blood, _our_ pain, _our_ tomb!"

"Since the Moon Kingdom fell, I have had many tombs, and I do not choose to revisit them," Rei said quietly, her hands folded in her lap. "Find someone else to tell your sad stories to, but do not tell them to me. I have the business of living to get on with, and I cannot do it mired in the past."

Raggedly, he said, "The Silver Millennium was not a means to an end, a trap conceived to weaken and hold Metallia until a time when she could be defeated. It is wrong that you should know of it only as a time of tragedy and nothing of what came before. These are not tales of warning and woe that you can put your hands over your ears and refuse to listen to. These things, the wonderful and the terrible and the mundane, are things that happened to you!"

She sprang to her feet as the fire crackled and roared and rushed towards the ceiling. "No, _not_ me! Not anymore, and not ever again! Stop trying to make me into the person you want me to be. All my life, people have tried to force me into the mold of what they thought I should become. I've fought long and hard to become the person _I_ choose to be, and if I didn't let any of them have their way, I'm certainly not going to let you make me forget who I am."

Jadeite regarded her steadily. "The Silver Millennium is part of who you are, and until you remember and accept it, you will never be whole."

As the firelight danced over his still, inscrutable features, she could suddenly hear her own voice in her head, begging him to come back to her. She sounded young and angry and frightened, but she could also hear that she had loved him deeply, and that frightened her even more.

"Well, I've learned one thing from the past, haven't I? I fell in love with you, and it was the wrong decision. I will never do so again."


	5. Communication III: Eye Contact

**Title**: Communication III: Eye Contact  
><strong>Description<strong>: Eyes may be the window to men's souls, but you can choose how long and hard you look through them.  
><strong>AN**: Third installment. Takes place in the same universe as Two Truths and a Lie, which should be read first. The first part takes place before the events of _Two Truths and a Lie_, and the second takes place quite a bit after.

* * *

><p><em>Communication<em>

_III. Eye Contact_

They met, by his design rather than by chance, in one of the sunniest parts of the palace. She agreed to walk with him readily enough, but mentioned that she had an experiment she had to get back to shortly. It was always this way with her, one step forward and one step back. He didn't know if the fact that he felt worried rather than excited meant he was now a better man than the one he had been in the Silver Millennium.

"You mentioned that a number of matriarchal tribes were part of the Golden Kingdom. Did they have their own written as well as spoken languages?" she asked him with the scholar's grave courtesy.

"No."

His response was unusually curt, and the lines of her forehead tensed in confusion.

"You talk to me more than any of the other senshi talk to the Shitennou," Zoisite said baldly.

Dark lashes rose and fell with the grace of a maple leaf settling onto the lake surface, shielding her limpid gaze from his. "That is their choice."

"That's not what you thought about Serenity and Endymion."

Her eyes flicked quickly to his in warning, and he thought that anyone who forgot that ice burned just as well as fire was a fool.

"Once, I thought their coming together threatened their own well-being, as well as countless others. I don't see the harm in our present circumstances."

"Don't see the harm? Have you taken a good look at Mamoru lately?" Zoisite demanded.

Her voice was low and chilling in its fury. "Don't lecture me about Mamoru's well-being. You know nothing of what we have done to ensure his safety and his happiness in your absence."

"Don't parade your sacrifices in front of me."

The harshness of his words fed off the hurt in his shuttered gaze the way a greedy parasite did on its host, ensuring survival in the short term at the expense of the future.

"Then don't question my concern for one of my dearest friends – or my dedication to my duty. Perhaps my self is no longer interchangeable with my duty, but that doesn't mean I take it lightly."

They had stopped halfway along the hall to face each other, and Zoisite observed her closely while he still had the chance.

He was an expert at spotting patterns. It was this rare acuity which had rendered him both an excellent archer and an able spymaster: he could make the exacting adjustments to terrain and weather conditions needed to hit his targets, and his crafty mind found it easy to make sense of the welter of information on marriage alliances, trade volume, and other forms of communication between conspiring lords. These very skills had helped cement Endymion's hold on the Terran kingdoms many times over. It was a shame that whenever he found an orderly pattern, he felt the need to shatter it.

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

He wished he could let it go. But if he didn't lance the wound now, if they dressed it with a bandage and tried to put it from their minds entirely, at best it would heal properly; at worst it would fester and devour them.

"You only look at me when I say something that upsets you, that reminds you of the past, so you only associate me with the old and unpleasant things."

Her cheeks flushed. Ami had never liked accusations – neither making them nor receiving them – and he was reminded of a much more pleasant time, when he had accused her of being in love with him. She blushed beautifully, turning all the named shades between red and pink and the nameless ones as well.

"I look at you all the time," she insisted.

Zoisite reached out and took her chin in his hands, tilting it upwards. Inwardly, he trembled as his fingers met delicate skin they had not been privileged to touch in millennia, and his grip was not as forceful as his words.

"Look here. Not at my chest, not at my feet, not at some spot beyond my shoulder you would much rather look at. Am I that repulsive to you?"

Her limbs were motionless, but her gaze darted from his faster than the whir of hummingbird wings, and he slowly relinquished his hold on her, wondering whether his words or this forbidden touch would be the blacker mark against him.

"Even now, you can't look me in the eye."

Ami turned to go, wondering at the weight and chill the light laid on her skin.

"Just tell me why. I need to know why."

His words carried softly to her on a phantom breeze, and she was seized by the memory of the cloying scent of cherry blossoms and a cruel laugh.

"Because my mind knows you deserve another chance, but my heart doesn't."

The rapport which had grown between them over the past few weeks vanished, felled in the blink of an eye. As she disappeared down a parallel hallway, he tried to reason with himself that it had been a false rapport, built on even shakier foundations than their relationship in the Silver Millennium. But he already missed her smile.

* * *

><p>The power generators had gone out again. It was a semi-regular occurrence and difficult to remedy since they still weren't entirely sure what the palace was running on. It seemed to be some unfathomable combination of highly advanced technology and a power similar yet not similar to the Silver and Golden Crystals. Setsuna assured them they would eventually get the hang of it, but for the moment, they were accustoming themselves to periodic blackouts.<p>

Rei hoped they would be able to have the problem solved before the heavy blanket of the Sleep lifted, leaving them exposed and vulnerable to the trials of the new world. The workings of the glowing chamber buried in the heart of the palace were as mysterious to her as the circumstances that had her walking down the shadowy corridor with Jadeite at her side.

In some areas, the opalescent walls allowed just enough light through so that the halls were bathed in eerie blue or brooding amethyst light. Not so in this one, which gave Rei the stifling impression of being blindfolded with black velvet. It was dark enough to obscure Jadeite's expression, but not dark enough to swallow the gold of his hair.

They were on their way to Usagi and Mamoru's suite in order to retrieve the Silver Crystal, which was needed to jump start the power cores. Jadeite, who loved the feel of cloth-bound books and carved wood, had a surprising affinity for the gleaming, almost organic nest of metal pipes and crystal tubes that powered the palace. But he had silently absented himself from the task force convened for the purposes of addressing the latest outage to match his longer strides to hers, and she had not objected.

Rei did not like entering other people's spaces, especially when privacy seemed to be in such short supply nowadays, but there was no hesitation when she put her hand on the door. Even without their owners' bodily presence, these rooms seemed warm and welcoming, and the door opened readily at her touch.

Jadeite watched as she headed not for the nightstand, where Usagi had told them the Crystal would be, but for the little round table that stood before the flowered armchair. Even in the darkness, he could tell her movements were precise and efficient, yet they contained all the pleasure and reverence a wine connoisseur reserved for the first decanting of a prized vintage.

There was a satisfying hiss and then a spark, and the smoky scent of fire ravenously consuming wood drifted towards him. As Rei touched the matchstick to the wicks of two candles resting on the cluttered surface, the sharp odor was replaced by the more fragrant smell of pomegranates and sandalwood.

"You don't need those."

His remark was more of a question than he wished. He recalled, clearly enough, that she had once held scarves of fire in her bare hands, great scarlet and ochre tongues of it that reached for the skies and were at once incomparably beautiful and utterly terrifying. He hadn't been able to take his eyes off her.

She cupped her fingers around the glass base of one of the candles, watching the cylinder of red wax slowly losing its shape from the center outwards as it flowed smoothly from solid to liquid. "No. But I like to do it."

His curiosity lingered in the silence, not pushing, merely present, like a great cat stretched luxuriously along a wide tree limb with its slumberous jade eyes half-open.

"I've learned not to overestimate power," Rei said soberly, "and not to underestimate my wishes."

"And because it gives you comfort. It makes you feel human."

"Yes."

The surprise in her voice was as bright and warm as the new-struck light, and when she lifted her eyes to his, she wondered how she had forgotten that his eyes were the shade of the cobalt heart of fire.

Rei handed one of the candles to him, and he angled it skillfully overhead as she opened the bottom drawer of the nightstand. There, wrapped in a worn red bow and nestled in the embrace of a small stuffed bunny, was the crystal that held the power to save worlds and craft new lives.


	6. Communication IV: Body Language

**Title**: Communication IV: Body Language  
><strong>Description<strong>: "Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it." – Sara Gruen, _Water for Elephants_  
><strong>AN**: Fourth installment (of six total). Takes place in the same universe as Two Truths and a Lie, which should be read first. The first part takes place some time after the events of _Two Truths and a Lie_, and the second takes place _way_ after that.

* * *

><p><em>Communication <em>

_IV. Body Language_

Jadeite sat at the table, allowing the steam rising from the porcelain cup to infuse his nostrils. The delicate cup could have fit perfectly in the hollow of one hand, even one so small as his companion's, but by mutual and unspoken agreement, he kept his free hand in plain sight. At odds with the tranquil act of two old acquaintances taking tea together, his fingers circled in unceasing motion, tracing patterns she didn't know the meaning of on the mirrored tabletop.

"So you think that if we feed the palace some of our energy, the blackouts will occur less frequently?" Ami asked, fascination and repulsion warring in her voice.

He nodded wearily, setting down his teacup to lean his head in his hand. "Life force is among the purest, most potent forms of energy that exist."

"And you believe it's been doing this all along, drawing any ambient energy it can get…?"

"And when it runs out, that's when our power supply runs out. Yes. Exactly."

She sat back, mulling over his hypothesis. "Perhaps that's why we've been sleeping so much. We all thought it was just the nightmares, but if this is the case–"

Ami's eyes widened in horror as she arrived at the conclusion he had been easing her towards. "That's why everyone is asleep?"

Jadeite lifted both hands, turning his scarred palms upwards.

"In many but not all ways, we are stronger, and the quality of our life force is different. The Palace pulls less strongly on us than it does on most other humans, and so we are merely tired, while they must slumber all the hours of the day. This drain on our reserves is the reason, I believe, that we can no longer access our paths to Elysion. We fall short not because the way is blocked, but because we lack the strength to lay the remainder of the road."

The Shitennou's present inability to reach Elysion concerned her somewhat less than the fate of the world. After all, they had done well enough with only Mamoru's connection to Elysion before the Shitennou's return.

"But at some point, they must awaken. Crystal Tokyo is not – it cannot, it _does not_ remain a kingdom of sleepers!"

He shrugged. "I don't know. My guess would be that the palace is young, and like many young things, it needs substantial amounts of energy to grow larger and stronger. After it – matures, so to speak, the sleepers should awaken. Perhaps Sailor Pluto will be able to confirm whether or not this is really the case. At present, it is merely conjecture."

Ami shook her head distractedly, the lengthening locks of her hair brushing her shoulders as they hadn't done since her teenage years. "We need to tell the others."

Just then, Zoisite's voice drifted through the open doorway, and the amused edge to it suggested that he was walking with Kunzite. Ami sat silently, suffused with tension as the water had been infused by the tea leaves, until the paired footsteps passed the door and continued down the hall, fading with the growing distance.

"Why do you do that?"

"Hm?"

He nodded at her wrist, which had twitched almost imperceptibly a moment ago. The evidence of the disturbance lay in the three drops of orange pekoe glistening on the metal surface.

"I don't know." And it was true, she didn't. It was a bad habit whose meaning she couldn't fathom, but somehow it disturbed her. She used her fingertip to dash away the spilled liquid.

His smile was sad and knowing. "I do."

"Tell me, then." She spoke calmly, but his manner was too gentle to mean that the knowledge would give her any comfort. In fact, the kinder he was to her, the worse it was likely to be.

Jadeite lifted the teapot with an inquiring look; when she shook her head, he set it down again without refilling his own cup.

"In the Silver Millennium, you used to carry a small blade there, cleverly concealed in your sleeve to hide it from the sight of others. You tended to use your physical weapons at very close range. In this way, I pitied you, because it meant you always saw so clearly the consequences of your actions."

He paused, lifting an eyebrow an inquiry. "Should I stop?"

"No." Her voice was steadier than her fingers, so she set her cup down again.

"You never went without it, whether you were dancing or fighting or discreetly kissing someone in the gardens at midnight. So whenever you – or your princess – were threatened, you would move your wrist just so," he copied her motion, "and the knife would fall into your hand."

"How did you know this?" she asked.

For the first time during their conversation, he looked at her with surprise.

"Zoisite told me."

* * *

><p>Ages ago, they had gone to bed laughing. She had put her fingers to his lips to signal quiet and when that didn't work, touched her mouth to his in an infinitely more effective seal.<p>

The walls were selectively porous, and sound followed neither rhyme, reason, nor the laws of nature once it escaped into the hushed halls of the Crystal Palace. Minako had the bedroom next to hers, and Rei didn't want her to hear them.

She always knew when Minako cried herself to sleep and when she left her console on all night, playing re-runs of her favorite shows. No one ever heard so much as a sneeze from Ami's room once her door was closed. Earlier that afternoon, e_veryone_ had heard Makoto tell Nephrite where she wished he would go (far, far away, in both time and space) and when she wanted it to happen (immediately).

Most of the time, Rei hated it, this invasive quality of the walls that could both amplify and silence sound. But there was one part of it she did appreciate. She always lay awake until she heard Mamoru and Usagi tell each other, as they did every night, "Good night, I love you."

They hadn't said "Good night, I love you" to each other. But he had run his hand down the glorious ebony length of her hair and kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth, so gently that she was lulled into a reluctant slumber.

The first time he had stayed with her, she had stayed awake all night. She wasn't used to sleeping with other people in the room, let alone in the same bed. Her father had been strict about children sleeping in their own bedrooms, even during thunderstorms and fevers, and she hadn't been allowed to go to sleepovers. There were quite a few of those once she met the girls, but Rei never slept very well on sleepover nights.

For one thing, there was the noise. Of the girls, only Usagi snored, but even Ami's quiet breathing was out of place among the usual chorus of night sounds. Then there would be the endless shifting and resettling, the muffled rustle of blankets , and the creak of the floor and mattress under the weight of unfamiliar bodies. Her sense of these things became even more acute when someone else was sleeping not just in the same room, but in the same bed.

Jadeite did not snore. From what she could tell, he came to instant wakefulness, like the tiger that kept an open eye to danger even while asleep. He didn't even move very much once his breaths deepened and the interval between them lengthened. He was the only man to have shared her bed, both during and since the Silver Millennium.

She had forgotten much about their time together. One of the things she had forgotten was the heat that rose from their intertwined bodies. At first, the warmth was delicious, sensuous and comforting at the same time, like a mug of Makoto's cocoa topped off with rich cream. Over the course of the night, however, it became suffocating.

It was funny how much she minded the heat. She, who had always fire, now found its barest touch paralyzing. For the heat was treacherous, scorching her nose and throat until she felt like she was choking on powdery ashes. With the heat came dreams, dreams that seared her mind and burned away the senses.

Sleep was letting go of everything, while retaining the whole of one's essence. And in sleep, the memories she had left behind came back to her.

When the bloodied knife plunged into Serenity's breast, she screamed. Her eyes flew open, and she began to struggle against the iron cage of Jadeite's arms. When he slept, they took on a new and frightening weight.

He drew away hurriedly and fumbling with something on the nightstand. The lamp snapped on, illuminating the planes and hollows of his face in an instant, and she recoiled.

His body stilled as the sorrow moved into his eyes. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

She looked down at her hands, realized she was rubbing her wrists convulsively, and forced herself to stop. "Yes. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize."

She swung her feet off the bed and onto the rug, willing herself to calmness. She didn't want him to ask her what she had dreamed about because then she would have to tell him the truth. She didn't want to tell him that the Shitennou had tied the senshi up and brought them to Beryl – not dead but just barely alive, as per her instructions: just enough breath left in their bodies to see their princess die before their eyes.

Her silence had a weight of its own, and Jadeite stood slowly, removing himself from the bed. "I'll go," he said hoarsely.

"Don't leave me again," she said, turning to reach for his hand. His fingers were hot, as hot as the bow had been in her hands when she had flamed thousands of Beryl's troops to their death, but she didn't let go of them.

"Rei. Tell me what you want me to do."

She tried to smile, but he felt the tears against his skin as she pressed her cheek against his hand.

"Don't hold on so tightly."


	7. Communication V: Frame Shift

**Title**: Communication V: Frame Shift  
><strong>Description<strong>: Broadening your horizons is one way to describe a change in perspective that destroys your peace of mind.

**A/N**: Fifth installment of six. Takes place in the same universe as Two Truths and a Lie, which should be read first. Both parts take place some time after the events of Two Truths and a Lie (the second one takes place directly after Sugar and Spice). One of these days I'll come up with a timeline…

* * *

><p><em>Communication <em>

_V. Frame Shift _

"I don't remember much about the Silver Millennium, but I do know this. My family thought I would make a terrible senshi."

She had been moving into the peak of her power just as the Silver Alliance began its fatal decline, and seeing her in action evoked the old goddesses, who epitomized power, beauty, and passion. He had no idea what her family had been thinking, and said so.

With its sultry, dizzying heat and the dozens of seedlings bursting from their planters, the greenhouse was a world away from the rest of the dormant palace. The air was thick and humid here, the perfect setting for talking about things half-remembered, a time so close yet so distant that it seemed as if they were in the midst of waking from a shared dream. But for him, the dream was his only reality, and he clung to it fiercely. For her, it was only one of many that was best left forgotten.

"I was used to doing only what I wanted, what I thought was right. I often acted in the heat of the moment without thinking through the consequences. My family thought that such a trait would not bode well for my ability to follow orders. They thought that at some point, I would listen to my heart over my leader, and that would be that.

"And I did, didn't I?" she asked wistfully.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again when she continued, "But I never thought a time would come when a great chasm would open up between what I wanted and what I thought was right. In the Silver Millennium, everything I knew told me it was wrong for us to be together, but–"

"It wasn't wrong. It was the most right thing there was."

Makoto tilted her head, studying the speckled orchids she was babying along. Gently, she twitched off a browning petal. It crumbled to dust at her touch, and she shook her fingers lightly over the soil. "Do you honestly believe that, Nephrite?"

"Our love is not the reason the Silver Millennium fell," he said heatedly.

"Our actions – our _failure_ – led to the destruction of countless lives and an entire civilization," she countered.

"That was Beryl and Metallia's doing, not ours! If she hadn't come, if they hadn't been so filled with malice and hatred and evil–"

"Then Earth would have gladly accepted Serenity as its queen, the Silver Alliance would have refrained from tearing itself apart in civil war, and we would all have married and lived happily ever after? Is that what you think?"

Her laugh was bitter in a way he remembered it had never been, as bitter as the strong coffee she made every morning and the dark chocolate she favored in her baking.

He countered, "Why do you think that two – no, ten – people being together was enough to collapse the universe? We were merely the last straw to break the camel's back. The foundation of the Silver Alliance was already dissolving from beneath, but everyone was too arrogant, or too frightened, to see it. Until it was too late."

"Perhaps any civilization falls, eventually, but it didn't need to have happened then. It didn't need to have happened to Serenity."

"She made her choices, and we made ours. We're only human, Makoto, and not even the stars can see the future clearly. At any given moment, we can only do our best."

She turned away, staring blindly at the opaque crystal wall. "What if the best choice had been not to fall in love with each other? There was no way for things to have ended well."

He closed his eyes. "Falling in love was not a mistake. The greatest mistake we made was not trusting each other. The Silver Millennium fell because its time had come, not because we dared to try and find happiness together."

"Are you certain? Because I'm not. So you understand, don't you, if it's not as easy to begin again as it seems?"

She finally looked up at him, and it was small comfort that his eyes were as wet as hers.

* * *

><p>They sat together in a room that was floor-to-ceiling with maps: historical maps with sea monsters, topographical maps, and traffic maps. Minako wished finding the directions to her life were as easy as finding the shortest route from Tokyo to Yokohama. Take this little-known back road to avoid the traffic jam of parental drama, get onto the left ramp to assure Usagi and Mamoru's happiness, follow the U-turn marked in red to figure out where everything went wrong and start over again.<p>

All of the cookies she had made with Makoto had been eaten, and her misshapen and exotically-colored cookies were clustered forlornly in the center of the plate. Only Usagi continued to nibble valiantly on one of them, and Minako suspected that her friend was too preoccupied to notice the tough, dry texture that Makoto said was from adding too much flour.

Minako had always been one for excesses, usually in emotion or devotion, but recently a deafening numbness was floating her through her days. She kept her attention firmly on the projector screen, willing herself to show interest and avoiding the gentle concern radiating from Usagi when she failed to respond to Rei's question.

"Minako?"

Her voice was falsely cheerful, as brittle as the heart-shaped cookie she snapped in two. "Yes, of course. Those priorities seem logical to me."

The tilt to Rei's dark brows was skeptical, but she couldn't fault her for lack of attention. Their plans for what to do when the Sleep receded were constantly being reformulated and expanded, but their earlier fervor had died away. They really had no idea what to expect when the people reawakened, and the irremediable uncertainty and constant quibbling over details was draining.

"Fine. So we are agreed that our main focus should be on infrastructure and communication. We must ensure that people have shelter, food and water, and adequate clothing. This will be easier in some places than others, and as Ami and Mamoru have pointed out, we have no idea what condition people will be in once they wake up."

When the meeting finally dragged to a close, they had each been assigned what the senshi rather ruefully referred to as "problem lists." Minako's mainly centered around the diplomatic nightmare of how to inform what remained of the world governments of the situation, as well as trying to figure out ways to integrate older systems and personnel into the new government.

Usagi tried to catch Minako's eye as the others started filing out. When that failed, she plucked Minako's sleeve, her touch as light and arresting as the brush of a butterfly's wing.

From his place beside her, Mamoru said hesitantly, "Minako, if you like, perhaps you could discuss some of this with Kunzite. From what I understand, several of the issues they – we – faced in the early unification of Terra may be relevant, and he seems to remember most of the details."

Unlike Mamoru himself, who recalled almost none of them. Minako glanced briefly at the doorway, through which Kunzite had exited moments ago, and fought the compulsion to bring her thumbnail to her lips.

"Ami has also been talking about some of these things with Zoisite, so if you prefer to work with them instead–"

She thought, with a pang of regret, that she was more used to seeing worry than content grace Mamoru's features.

"No, no. It's a good suggestion." She forced herself to smile, wondering what part of her expression was making Mamoru wince. Minako, who was usually quite aware of how she carried herself, did not realize that her arms were folded so tightly that they suggested arctic temperatures. "In this situation, it makes sense for us to speak directly. I would appreciate his insights, especially since he'll also be heavily involved in the adjustment process."

That was how they talked about the situation, as if this transition phase between twenty-first century Tokyo and Crystal Tokyo was somehow like dealing with a traumatized child.

"But you don't need to if you don't feel ready – not right away, anyway," Mamoru tried to reassure her.

She continued to nod and smile, but her head ached with residual tension, and she was glad when he finally left.

"Mamoru thinks it's difficult for you to talk to Kunzite because you were once enemies. But that's only half the story, isn't it?"

Minako looked down at her friend, into those wonderfully clear blue eyes that seemed untouched by the shadows beneath them. "No," she agreed, letting out the breath she'd forgotten she was holding. "It's not because we fought each other. It's because we loved each other."

She sat down at the table again and leaned her head on her arms. When Usagi's hand smoothed her hair with long, comforting strokes, she closed her eyes.

"Usa… I don't think any of us really realized what it was like for you when you found out that Mamoru was Tuxedo Kamen and Prince Endymion. We thought you were overjoyed about being reunited with your prince, but that wasn't all of it, was it?"

"No." Usagi's voice was quiet, and she didn't stop moving her fingers through the silken strands. "It wasn't only that."

She continued, "But I did have very strong feelings for Mamoru, even if they weren't overwhelmingly positive." She and Minako shared a brief smile in memory of a flighty young girl who had once been called Odango Head by a serious young man.

"My feelings weren't the only things that changed. I had to shift the way I thought about him, what parts of my life he fit into. He wasn't just a shadowy dream of a handsome prince, a mysterious and dashing ally, or an irritating friend of a friend. He was all of those put together, and so much more than that. But in many ways, it was easier for me."

"No, Usagi." Minako raised her head now and took her friend's hands in hers. "It wasn't easier, never easier. It was just…different."

Usagi smiled at her reassuringly. "All right. But what I mean is, I was able to decide, rather quickly, what role I wanted him to play in my life. I don't think we know yet what the senshi and the Shitennou will be to each other in this time, let alone Minako and Kunzite. Do you understand what I mean?"

"You mean our private selves can be kept apart from our public selves. The leaders of the Neo-King and Queen's guard will have a relationship of necessity, but it doesn't have to be the same relationship that holds between the individuals in question."

"Yes. But you can't just let things drift away until you find yourself in a place you didn't mean to be, with no memory of how you got there. Together, you must decide what you will be to each other."

She nodded fervently, finally let her confusion rise to the surface as the tears glimmered under her eyelashes. "Oh, Usa, I can't find the way things should be. If I was his lover, his _wife_, in a former life, what does that make me now?"

Usagi hugged her tightly. "You will figure out what is right for you, Minako. I know you will." She sat back, and her compassion and concern were tangible presences with weight and warmth. "Would you like me to be there when you talk to Kunzite?"

Minako tried to brush away her tears, and Usagi's eyes widened at the sight of her fingers. They were bitten to the quick, the skin as raw and red as the pain that stalked her senshi.

"What happened, Minako?"

Her fingers curled into her palms, then flattened again. She dropped her gaze to them, straining against her nearly-unbreakable habit of shielding the princess from whom she no longer had any secrets.

"Every time I see him, I want to pull out my _heinshin _pen. It's very difficult to resist. The instinct feels buried so deep inside me that I feel like I'm fighting my true nature. So I bite my nails to stop myself, to have something else to do with my hands."

"Doesn't it hurt?" Usagi couldn't keep the shock and dismay from pervading her words.

Minako's voice was utterly emotionless. "Yes. It hurts."


	8. Communication VI: Confidences

**Title**: Communication VI: Confidences  
><strong>Description<strong>: "Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted." – Don Delillo

**A/N**: Last installment of the _Communication _set. Takes place in the Two Truths and a Lie universe, which should be read first. The first part follows shortly after _Two Truths and a Lie_ and is closer to the original style than any of the others in this series, and the second part takes place quite a bit after, near the end of the Sleep.

* * *

><p><em>Communication <em>

_VI. Confidences_

The highest spire of the Crystal Palace was haunted. Not by a ghost, nor by a demon, nor by a poltergeist, but by flesh-and-blood men who had been brought back ostensibly because they had unfinished business. Or perhaps it was the world that wasn't yet finished with them.

Thus, there were no sightings of white shades drifting through the halls – although Kunzite's hair could do a fair imitation – no rattling of chains, no wailing moans, and no demands of vengeance for their untimely deaths.

Meetings of the spire's inhabitants were unscheduled and unplanned, the epitome of spur-of-the-moment, really, for no one could predict when misery would strike. Only that it did so, and often. Most of the time, the Shitennou preferred to contemplate their difficulties in private, but on occasion, there was no substitute for the company of three other men who were in exactly the same situation – but not quite – and who were just as miserable as you were. Plus one future king who was deliriously happy with his one true love and just wanted his friends to be happy.

It was true that they never really changed the locations of these commiseration sessions, but they didn't go out of their way to announce them, either. Regardless, Mamoru had an uncanny knack for sensing when they were about to take place. He also brought chocolate. Nephrite supplied the wine. Actually, it was really Setsuna who supplied everything, but that was beside the point.

Normally, the chilly tower room that was roughly 70 percent window and 30 percent wall was Kunzite's refuge of choice. It was the best place from which to spot anyone or an army approaching the palace. Not that this was at all likely, but one could never be too careful.

Kunzite hadn't exactly volunteered to host what Mamoru secretly thought of as "The Shitennou Support Group," but he had been the leader of the Shitennou and the greatest share of guilt lay with him. In light of his crimes, what was a little real estate between friends and fellow traitors? It wasn't as if there was a shortage of empty rooms in the Crystal Palace. And it wasn't as if any of them really belonged to him.

"Misery loves company, except when it goes by the name of Kunzite."

He glanced up, not surprised to see Zoisite standing before him (Zoisite was a man of many unique abilities but being able to sneak up on Kunzite was not and had never been one of them) but surprised his rationalization had been so plain to see. He would have to work on that. Otherwise, next thing he knew Minako might know how he felt about her. Actually, there was a good chance Minako already knew how he felt about her given how assiduously she avoided him, but again, one could never be too careful.

"I have no issue with your presence in this room," Kunzite replied. "I came here fully aware that you would also be here. If I hadn't wanted to be here, I would have gone elsewhere."

The sardonic expression on Zoisite's face told him he had used the word "here" too many times to be entirely convincing.

"Elsewhere… You mean your secret hideout in the western corner of Makoto's greenhouse?" Jadeite asked matter-of-factly.

He was horrified. "You know about it?"

"Of course we do. Everyone does, including Makoto," Zoisite said cheerfully as he took a seat on the icy floor.

Kunzite grimaced. "But I was careful to enter only during the times I knew she wouldn't be there, so as not to disturb her."

Jadeite rolled his eyes. "This may come as a surprise to you, Kunzite, but not everyone follows a perfectly regimented schedule, detailed down to what they'll be having for breakfast a month in advance. Makoto realized fairly quickly that you always go there between the hours of two and four, so she stays out of your way to give you some privacy for your brooding."

He subsided into an embarrassed silence. Jadeite took up his customary position on the window ledge, and soon Mamoru and finally Nephrite joined them.

"I hereby call this meeting to order," Nephrite announced, wineglass in one hand, the other extended to receive a chocolate bar from Mamoru. It was the cheapest kind because while Nephrite cared a good deal about the quality of his wine, he cared close to nothing about what percent of the hard little bar in front of him was the finest dark cacao. In fact, the smaller the amount of actual chocolate in the thing and the greater the amount of ingredients like caramel and nougat and crispy cookie wafers, the better. "So who did something stupid this week? Wait, scratch that – who did the stupidest thing this week?"

Zoisite raised his hand. "I provoked Ami into arguing with me, and then I asked her if she found me repulsive."

"I'm guessing her answer was an unambiguous 'yes,'" Nephrite surmised.

Jadeite stared at him. "Why would you do that? She actually converses with you as if you were a normal human being. Even I can't do that on a day-to-day basis."

"Oh, please. This from the person who once asked Princess Mars whether she bathed with the Sacred Fire, too, since she was so attached to it," Zoisite shot back.

Mamoru, who was still getting reaccustomed to their banter, was torn between saying something encouraging to Zoisite and admonishing Jadeite. In the end, he took the middle road – keeping quiet and taking a fortifying bite of his Twix bar. After all, Usagi had told him that sometimes the only hedge against despair was not to take yourself too seriously, and it seemed to him that thus far in life, her coping mechanisms had worked much better than his.

"I would also like to know how this came about," Kunzite spoke up. "It seemed to me as if things were going well. From what you said, you had even managed to the broach the subject of the Silver Millennium with her."

Zoisite sighed, falling back with a thud until he was spread-eagled on the tiles. Somehow, he managed not to spill a single drop of his wine. Looking up at the ceiling, he said, "We talk about the Silver Millennium all the time. Therein lies the problem."

They waited patiently for his answer, since time lay heavily on their hands these days.

Finally, Zoisite lifted his head, letting his coppery curls brush the floor as he directed his gaze at Jadeite. "You want to know how Ami deals with me? How she can bring herself to chat with me, so civilly and with such interest, about the Silver Millennium? Because she views me as a fascinating historical relic. A walking, talking textbook. That's the only way she can distance herself enough to talk to me when she can't even look me in the eye."

Another man would have flinched from the bitterness that suffused Zoisite's voice. But Jadeite didn't. It was the twin to his own pain, his constant shadow and close companion.

As always, Mamoru found himself searching for believable synonyms for "She doesn't really hate you." In the end, he had to go with, "If it's any consolation, I don't believe she consciously sets out to make you feel that way."

Zoisite lay back on the floor, sounding as weary as a raw recruit after three consecutive practice matches against Kunzite. "I know, Mamoru. She is obviously forcing herself to do something that is very difficult for her because she believes it is the right thing to do. So now I'm sparing the both of us."

It was clear as the crystal that caged them that Zoisite was also forcing himself to do something that was very difficult for him. Nephrite thought they had reached the point at which there would be relatively little absolution his friend could gain from further unburdening himself, so a subject change was in order. He volunteered, "I made Makoto cry yesterday."

Jadeite, who often found himself in the role of encouraging his fellow Shitennou to talk these days, prompted, "Why?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Nephrite confessed, "but it may have been because I told her I didn't believe our falling in love with each other was a mistake."

There was a sudden collective intake of breath, like the sound of a spring breeze rushing through a copse of cherry blossoms.

"Good for you," Zoisite said staunchly.

Nephrite shrugged. "Well, I didn't say I was successful in convincing her to come around to my viewpoint. But if we cannot come to an agreement about this, how can we come to an understanding about anything?"

There was a moment of silence, and then Jadeite said, "I always thought you would have made a fine negotiator. All those times you managed to 'accidentally' insult delegates to the Terran Court were just a ploy to get reassigned, weren't they?"

"I admit to nothing," Nephrite said, but for a moment, his grin was the wide, infectious one they had not seen for weeks.

"For the record, you didn't fool me," Kunzite informed him. "You were reassigned because I received a request from their majesties to temporarily remove you from ambassadorial detail."

"And you complied with that request?" Mamoru was shocked. As far as he could tell, the Kunzite of the past would never have let anyone tell him how to command his men.

He smiled unexpectedly. "Let's just say that they weren't as concerned about the supposed insults experienced by the delegates as they were about the compliments being paid to their daughters. Besides, I was of the opinion that his time would be more effectively spent on border patrol than in the ballroom."

A general lightening of the mood occurred, but like a good day in April, it could only last for so long before it drifted away ahead of a cold front.

"Well, Jadeite?" Nephrite prompted. "We can usually depend on you for some sort of contribution to our ever-increasing list of mistakes to be avoided."

Jadeite traced a rune in a spill of burgundy wine before he spoke, and Zoisite managed to identify it before he dashed his finger through the liquid. It was the three pointed one for regret, so formed because the worst regrets carried threefold influence: they tainted the past, the present, and the future.

"Rei was gracious enough to aid me in my attempts to access my path to Elysion. I responded by lecturing her and forcing her to confront the worst parts of the Silver Millennium, and I finished things off by telling her that failing to recover her memories would render her an incomplete person. I believe the ceiling of that room now bears a permanent scorch mark."

"I'm surprised you're not the one wearing it," Zoisite murmured.

"Yes, well, one should be grateful for small miracles, I suppose."

No one mentioned the importance of reopening the portals to Elysion or the extreme lack of wisdom and delicacy in saying such things to Rei Hino. There wouldn't be anything new to say for which Jadeite hadn't already berated himself.

Mamoru asked suddenly, "Have I told you yet about the time I broke up with Usagi because I thought it would keep her safe?"

By now they had acquired enough modern day slang so no one batted an eyelash at the phrase "broke up with." Yet all four of them were looking at him as if he had grown an extra head.

"Was this before or after you remembered your past life?" Nephrite asked.

"After," Mamoru admitted. He still did not like remembering what he had put Usagi through, and he didn't think he would ever forget the despair and doubt that had clouded her eyes. "It's a long story, involving my future self and a series of nightmares – they were not your average, run-of-the-mill nightmares about giant mutant aphids or going to school naked or things like that; these really were terrible nightmares. Anyway, I thought Usako would die unless I stayed away from her.

"She was really devastated. For awhile, she thought she would never be able to trust me again. But we were able to work things out and rebuild our relationship."

Zoisite asked, "Just for clarification… there was no slaughter of innocents, no destruction of the universe, no betrayal of love or promises or oaths of fealty, was there?"

"And any ones that only occurred in your dreams don't count," Nephrite added quickly.

"Well, no," Mamoru admitted. "At least, not in that time and place and not by my hand, and I wasn't actually directly involved in that except that for the part where we helped save the Crystal Tokyo of the future."

The Shitennou were at a loss for coming up with a proper response, as they were trying to decide why they felt inordinately disappointed at this extraordinarily good news.

Kunzite could see how crestfallen Mamoru was becoming and that the others were potentially gearing up to ask more uncomfortable questions. To circumvent them, he said sincerely, "Thank you, Mamoru. It sounds like it must have been a very challenging experience for you and the… Usagi, and we appreciate you telling us about it."

His gimlet eye prompted three somewhat delayed nods and murmurs from the other Shitennou.

Deciding that wasn't going to be enough, Kunzite continued, "In fact, it has given me great insight into my own situation."

They all turned to him in amazement. It was rare for Kunzite to discuss anything remotely related to Minako, even at several degrees' removal.

He stood before the wall that overlooked the harbor, his feet planted shoulders' width apart and his hands clasped lightly behind him as he thought about what to say. "I have not spoken to Minako in a fortnight. And that in itself is astonishing to me, but perhaps not in the way one might expect. I don't know if the experience was similar for the rest of you, but I imagine you will understand what I mean. During the Silver Millennium, I started to feel this… somewhat painful, but also hopeful anticipation. I was always waiting to see Venus, so much so that even glimpsing her planet in the night sky gave me pleasure.

"Had I allowed myself to acknowledge it, I would have confessed that she was never far from my mind. Time passed with unendurable slowness when we were not together, and when she left me, it felt like the sun had gone, never to rise again. I never imagined that I would be fortunate enough to see her nearly every day, never even allowed myself to dream of the possibility that we could permanently reside on the same planet, under the same roof.

"Now I know a different pain, that I cannot reach out and hold her, touch her cheek, that she no longer feels the same way about me. Because she no longer knows who I am."

He turned to them, searching for the faintest echo of empathy and comprehension, but also hoping for his friends' sakes that he would not find it in their faces.

"This world seems to me like one beyond imagining, one in which grandfathers routinely live to see their grandsons, in which soldiers can recover from wounds that would surely have been fatal in the Silver Millennium, and in which water and food and joy seem to be in abundance. Each day, I discover something new which astounds me. But more and more, I fear that I am becoming an inconvenience in a world of conveniences."

* * *

><p>He watched her from the overstuffed armchair, his eyes mere slits of lazy emerald glittering darkly in the lamplight. The long hallway muffled the echoes of the departing footsteps until the distance swallowed them whole. It was so quiet that he could almost believe they were the only two people awake in the world. And that thought was both frightening and exhilarating.<p>

Mindful of his gaze, she moved purposefully around the room, replacing cushions that had been knocked off couches, repositioning chairs, and finally shutting the doors to the tall wooden cabinet.

"You forgot one."

"Did I?"

Zoisite smiled slowly in response to her look of surprise, then rose with sinuous grace to reveal the last board game hidden in the depths of the chair.

Ami sighed. "You couldn't have told me about it earlier?"

"Of course not." He delivered the box into her outstretched hands and resettled himself in the armchair. "It would have shortened our time together, and I couldn't have that, could I?"

With her back to him, she allowed her lips to curve. It was his way to be generous with his emotions – both the positive and the negative – so he often said such things to her. Without exception, it felt like liquid sunlight was running through her veins, even though this time it was close to midnight and her mind flatly refused to let her indulge in such unscientific thoughts.

Ami turned around to face him, her expression smooth again. "Since you've done such an excellent job of conserving your energy tonight, you won't mind spending some more time with me before it's time to sleep, will you?"

Preempting what she was certain would be a lascivious suggestion, she said, "Let's go for a swim."

He was on his feet in an instant. Every morning, she swam laps before having breakfast with Makoto, and every so often, one of the others would join her. But he never had.

Zoisite wasn't sure who else knew about the other times she immersed herself in the vast pool, the laps that went on long and late at night when stillness blanketed the Crystal Palace. He had a hunch that for a time, she had gone swimming after each Game Night and other particularly trying occasions.

He was fairly sure she knew that he knew about them, but until tonight, he had never been invited to join her. They made their way to the lower levels of the palace in a benign and anticipatory silence, and he wasted little time locating and changing into a clean pair of swimming trunks.

When he set foot in the vast crystal chamber that housed the pool, he saw that she was already in the water, cutting through it as cleanly as a scythe did wheat. He lingered at the side until Ami swam over and dipped her fingers in the water, playfully flinging the droplets at him.

"Aren't you coming in?"

Before he could answer, her lips parted and she put her fingers to her temple.

_In another time and in another language, he asked the same question she had just posed to him, his voice teasing and challenging and caressing all at once. She stood at the edge of a glimmering lake, and even though he was no more than a stone's throw from the bank, he felt as distant from her as the endless horizon. _

She opened her eyes again to find herself still treading water, then dove down beneath the surface. She had never noticed it before, but being fully submerged in the water was strangely similar to how she felt when she heard his voice. A moment later, his arms closed around her, and that was an even better sensation.

Zoisite smiled triumphantly as they resurfaced together. Always, always, she eluded him in the water, which was her element and her stronghold, her source of strength and defense. But today, she had let him catch her.

His elation faded when he noticed the troubled expression on her face.

"Sometimes I'm afraid of the person I'm becoming."

The way she leaned against him confidingly, seeking his warmth and solidity, kept the panic from rising in his throat.

He looked down into her eyes, which seemed so dark a blue today that their contrast with her winter-pale skin brought to mind moonlight glimpsed from the mouths of ancient caverns, diamonds glittering against black silk, the matte onyx backing of an iridescent shell, all the dark undersides of things that are necessary to give light its beauty and luster.

He cupped her cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb over the delicate edge of her jaw in a motion that was both sensuous and soothing. She closed her eyes, the better to savor the sensation and to distance herself from the truth.

"In the beginning, I thought the palace was a prison. But now I think of it as a refuge, a time and space I'll be desperately sorry to leave."

He couldn't imagine anything less like a sanctuary than this imposing, spiky monstrosity with its chilly corridors and numberless secrets.

"Why?"

Her voice was so low as to be nearly inaudible. "Because until the sleepers waken, until the gates of the palace open, you cannot leave me again."


End file.
